depending on your access to the server you just might be SOL. If all you have is FTP access, you probably won't be able to do things like make the file (perl executable) executable as far a linux goes. Also depending on the setup, you could potentially not have access to your rc files (bashrc, cshrc, bash_profile) and would thus be unable to set environment variables needed in other posted answers. Depending on setup, you may or may not be able to set environment variables at all since the rc files are not read in certain circumstances (like cron jobs, httpd may be the same). Just more food for thought.